There is no greater school than a revolution. "Ten Days That Shook the World" John Reed

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 08:30:31PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> Enjoy :)
> http://isreview.org/issue/82/education-literacy-and-russian-revolution

Some really awesome stuff in there - here's a teaser:

"
Chamberlin questioned Lunacharsky, the commissar for education, about
whether such a model provided sufficient education in basic skills such
as grammar and spelling. Lunacharsky replied: “Frankly, we don’t attach
so much importance to the formal school discipline of reading and
writing and spelling as to the development of the child’s mind and
personality. Once a pupil begins to think for himself he will master
such tools of formal knowledge as he may need. And if he doesn’t learn
to think for himself no amount of correctly added sums or correctly
spelled words will do him much good.”23 But, Chamberlin explained, it
was hard to provide hard data on the success of the program, as “marks
are proverbially an unreliable gauge of students’ ability; and Russia
has no grading system.”24 Examinations were also largely abolished,
including those that had previously been necessary to gain entrance into
institutions of higher education. Why? Because “it was believed that no
one would willingly listen to lectures that were of no use to him.”25
"

One could say in response to the above that the USSR proved a
formidable military power and still provides America's rocket engines to
get to the ISS, so history shows that the USSR's soviet program worked
well for a time, despite its ultimate collapse.


Re Vygotsky's explorations of learning and psychology - something dear
to the heart of my own schooling experiences: "Although this task was
incomplete upon his death, and both his work and the revolution itself
were derailed by Stalinism (his work was banned under Stalin for twenty
years after his death),34 he made great headway in this process..."